Tale of Two Halves
by peter pan's horcrux
Summary: "It is a mistake to think of them as separate. They are not. They are two halves of a single whole." My contribution to Zutara Month 2014. Cover image by Aranehl.
1. 1 - Zuko

**A/N: Credit for the gorgeous cover image goes to Aranehl at !**

**This is my contribution to Zutara Month 2014. I've never done anything like this before ("this" meaning "writing from prompts") and I'm currently sick so this really isn't up to scratch at all (sorry guys).**

**And I know each prompt begs more than a measly two sentences to tell their stories, but this is what I've done in my bleary-eyed, cotton-minded state of illness.**

**There are two parts to this story – a Zuko part (this first chapter) and a Katara part (see chapter two). You may have to read both parts to see how in the name of Tui and La these things relate to their prompts (and even then, some of them will probably seem to fall completely irrelevant), but I hope they're okay…**

**Let me know what you think, though? :)**

**Part ****I – ****Zuko**

**Hidden**

The night is cloudy. Like the moon, she refuses even to peek at him.

**Sleep**

Her anger still echoes around the chamber, old tears are still crusted to his cheeks and older blood still stains his wrists. But her voice is softer now as his head rests on her legs and her breath laps at him like these encroaching tides of fatigue.

**Confession**

Hers is too late, and as such unnecessary. His uncle would be disgusted by his lack of manners, but he cannot look at her so long as that yellow ribbon hangs about her neck and a blue one (_because she actually _likes_ blue_) weighs heavy in his pocket.

**Garden**

Because her lips are blossoms against his skin and her hair is tangled grasses and wild daisies between his fingers. Her eyes are warm ponds that bubble with her nervous giggles, her skin and her scent are of the richest soils, and the pounds of her heart against his ribs is the fruit of his labours.

**Sadness**

Even after sixty years of trying, the words are never right. The hawk watches impatiently as the Fire Lord again gives up, leaving the avery and casting another failed letter into the fire as he passes.

**Quiet**

He'll never tell a single soul about the raggedness of her breathing. He longs to be her blankets, to wrap her in a tight and warm embrace and hold still her quivering body while she cries.

**Melt**

There is something to be said for the heat of her embrace. Like water from an iceberg, the tightness bubbles then cascades and drips from his back as the steadiness of his bottom lip falls out.

**Storm**

Yon Rha will never know that they only make it a stone's throw down the road before her knees and steely composure shatter. She quakes in his arm like the last brittle leaf left on a tree and, maybe, he thinks, that isn't so far from the truth.

**Fight**

Her fists beat against his chest and all he can do is watch as tears press from behind her knotted eyelashes. The only bruises she plants are beneath her own sleepless eyes, the insults she spews only cut her own flesh, and the Fire Prince has never been more terrified than right now as he realises she is her own worst enemy.

**Legend**

_It's just plain stupid_, the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation tells himself every day, _so so so stupid_. Yet every day, when her bright blue eyes grace his gaze, his soul reverberates with a voice too gentle to be his calling, "_Shu?_" and his heart immediately echoes with a reply that must be his; "_Oma!_"

**Touch**

There is a rule that ivory skin is never to meet chocolate. It is a rule they break every day ("Here's your ginseng-") just to rekindle that white hot spark in their stomachs.

**Frozen**

That is when his heart stops beating warmth and starts letting his blood flow cold. That is when his fire stops surging and when he starts to find greater joy in southern climates that embrace him at a temperature colder than his own.

**Candles**

He lights the room with tiny stars that flicker on their waxy stumps, and after many attempts he even manages to maintain a larger one with a blue light - the "moon". She tells him the night room he has made her is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen, but he disagrees; his eyes can't leave her.

**Dynamic**

Her musicianship matches her morals. There are no crescendos of the bass or situations which occur in shades of grey; there is only right or wrong, black or white, _mezzo forte_ or silence.

**Treasure**

There is only one thing that keeps Zuko's regret from boiling over on the bad days. A little girl with keen yellow eyes coos, nuzzles her black head against his chest, wraps a tiny fist tighter around his finger and anchors his gratitude in his life without the waterbender.

**Switch**

"You could have used the steam rooms! They have locks, you know!"

"But I can never remember which switch is for heat and which is for water..."

**Vague**

He learnt quickly that not all females held to stereotypes, and likewise he may breach a few himself. "What in Agni's name do you mean you "think we need some space", Zuko?!"

**Pieces**

A ribbon the colour of arctic waters, a purple pendant carved with a wave that rolls into tendrils of flame, and a golden clasp to hold the two. The only three things Iroh finds left over from their annual get-together are marred, melted and burnt into misshapes, obviously never to be put together again.

**Shiver**

It is painfully, skin-splittingly, breath-stoppingly cold. He only obliges her this with the keen knowledge that later she will strip him of all his nine layers of fur and feathers to breathe a new kind of heat into his skin.

**Ripple**

She is the only person who can cause his angst to falter and slip. And he thanks Ran and Shaw above that she has grown to love this her duty so much.

**Disaster**

He hadn't been expecting to be leaving the wedding so early _and_ so alone. But she had been quite clear in her angry retorts to his confessions; she was _Aang's_ and she was _happy_ and it didn't matter if he knew she was lying because this was _her_ life to lie through and it _wouldn't_ hurt anyone but herself.

**Sea**

His anger is fear redirected, like lightning from its intended path. Anger is not healthy, but it is strong and it feels safe as he glares out at grey waves tossing magnificent heads against the skies.

**Reconciliation**

"You're still a jerk."

But she accepts the flowers.

**Blaze**

Her temper often sparks his questioning of who is really the firebender in their relationship.

"If you leave the toilet seat up again, bloody Agni, Zuko, I am going to cut your royal dick off so you have no choice but to leave it down…!"

**Shower**

Presents and kisses and tarts and fruits and pastries and petals and anything for his queen. When she reprimands him for spoiling her, his surplus of affections rains down on her miniature.

**Flash**

There is only so much lightning that can crack the sky before the thunder breaks too. He has never been a patient man, but for her he would wait a thousand lifetimes.

**Electric**

"That's like waterbending!"

"Exactly. My uncle invented this technique himself by studying waterbenders."

**Soulmate**

"Then who is _mine_?" her voice is like erhu strings that have been plucked too long without care for their strength.

He pulls her into him and she clutches fistfuls of his robes to her face as he tells her with all the power and gentleness in his being, "Me. Always me."


	2. 2 - Katara

**Hidden**

She can feel his eyes on her. She wants to talk to him, curl herself into his warmth, but when he calls her name she turns away instead.

**Sleep**

His heaving falls from ragged gasps and pants to gentle even breaths. Her water heals the fresh red lines from his arms, and her tears caress the white scars she is too late erase.

**Confession**

"I love you, Zuko."

She knows she deserves being left here alone in the middle of her guests.

**Garden**

It was meant to be a tour of the palace grounds, but when she gave him a nudge and stumbled at his return push, pulling him after her when she fell and all of a sudden found him pressed over her… She quickly learned there were other things she would rather be exploring.

**Sadness**

Even after sixty years of waking up to empty skies, her weathered cheeks still sag a little more each day under disappointment. She sighs her comforting lie to herself: southern climates just aren't a desirable destination for Fire Nation messenger hawks.

**Quiet**

The rustling of sleeping pelts has never seemed loud before. When she thinks she has beaten him at their game of stay-awakes, she breaks her own silence with wet gasps and the bereaved moans of stitches in a heart coming undone.

**Melt**

"Please, Katara, I need you!"

"I've got you, Zuko; I'm here."

**Storm**

Rain has never bothered her. It is the thunder that his body is protection from; the thunder that shakes both the ground beneath her feet and the fibres of her being.

**Fight**

She wants him to hurt and she wants him to get angry, she wants to see his eyes and fists flare and for him to throw something - Spirits, _anything_ - at her. But mostly she just want him to hold her against his chest, tuck her head under his chin, and say, "You are real and I am real and I've got you, Katara; you're safe here."

**Legend**

Of course she picks up the one scroll that recounts the story of how the Painted Lady is forever indebted to her once-lover, the Blue Spirit. It means nothing, of course; she knows it is nothing more than fading ink on crumbling parchment trying to preserve culture (_but_ _destiny is a funny thing_).

**Touch**

She hates the smell of tea, but she brews it because her recipes are the only ones he likes now that his uncle has passed. It _isn't_ because of the silly butterflies she gets in her stomach when the teacup (_prop_) brings his hands to hers.

**Frozen**

On particularly bad nights, she will think of how his body stiffened when he saw her belly full with a kin that was not his. Her husband will always be confused to find her crying, and his chest will be so cold compared to what _his_ was against her.

**Candles**

She doesn't have a problem with being stuck in a certain Fire Lord's palace, but the monsoon season also has a way of distancing her from her night sky, from her moon. She tries to smile when a pale hand gestures her to follow him, but when she steps into what he calls her "night room" she finds she doesn't have to try anymore.

**Dynamic**

"Maybe I should just stick to my water bending…" One look at his gritted expression and she knows she has no gift for the tsungi horn.

"No, no, you _are_ good, just a little loud."

**Treasure**

She knows his love for her is gone when she sees the look he gives the tiny Crown Princess of the Fire Nation. _He used to look at me like that_, she thinks, walking away, rubbing her arms and trying - oh, Spirits, she's _trying_ - not to hate a newborn who has done nothing but bring happiness to the only person who has ever mattered to her.

**Switch**

She is determined that if he could swap sides in the middle of the Hundred Years War, then she sure as hell can adjust from South Pole winters to Fire Nation summers. The Fire Lord's face is redder than the curtains that adorn his palace when he finds her skinny dipping in the turtleduck pond.

**Vague**

She storms away with a dramatic sweep of her hair against his (_stupid/stupid/stupid/ugly/stupid/worthless/stupid/good-for-nothing/heart-breakingly-handsome-why-oh-why-did-he-do-this-to-me-I-love-him/stupid/stupid_) sheepish face. _Livid_ is an understatement, and _vague_ is just a nice word for _coward_.

**Pieces**

"Iroh? I'm back! Sorry, I think I just left my… What's that you got there?"

"I think one of my customers today has left a little less hopeful than he came."

**Shiver**

She knows he hates her winters as much as she despises his summers. But his face is startlingly soft when framed with fur, and he has never looked more gentle or wonderful than now as he wears Sokka's old blues.

**Ripple**

His lips quirk, like dipping her toe into a glass lake. Finally she has shattered the surface and his mirth bubbles up from his throat to join hers in the air.

**Disaster**

Suki's make-up is far from waterproof, and the waterbender curses her mother for never being there to teach her how to touch-up tear-streaked face-gunk. Just her luck that he would show up in the wee minutes before the ceremony with a confession for a wedding gift.

**Sea**

He is unforgiving at the best of times, his temper knows no fathomed bottom, and never does he sit without his knee bobbing or his fingers drumming a tide. His eyes are a storm that threatens to drown the air from her lungs, and despite being a waterbender, she is powerless to his depths.

**Reconciliation**

She wants to be angry at him - La only knows how she'd love to throttle him, even just a little. But his gesture is endearing and instead she assaults him with kisses.

**Blaze**

Maybe it's a slight overreaction, but under Yue's monthly curse, she claims no responsibility for the egos she bruises… Or the genitalia she severs.

**Shower**

She had only wanted to wash her hair without being crushed beneath an avalanche of exotic shampoo bottles whenever she accidentally knocks a shelf.

_Alas_.

**Flash**

Sometimes she goes many days without thinking of it. But the very sound of the purple betrothal pendant rattling in the top drawer when she wrenches it out, seeking her comb of a morning, and her thoughts are dashed between slicing fragments of pale lips on dark skin.

**Electric**

This surprises her a little, though it is a pleasant shock and it make her think. _Maybe, just _maybe_, fire and water aren't as opposite as we all make them out to be._

**Soulmate**

"Aang _is _my soulmate!" Her eyes are narrow under heavy brows, but so so broken; as though the ocean has been turned to glass and then thrown against a rocky cliff face.

"You were _Aang's_ soulmate. But you and I both know that he was not _yours_, and he never was." His fingertips are hope around her wrists; but it is an old hope, as cold as her tears in the bitter arctic air.

**So, yeah, sorry this is kinda... Gross and poorly written but I am sad and sick and full to the brim of Zutara (and all-'round plain Avatar in general) feels and I hope this is passable. Found an error? Tell me off by clicking that pretty "Review" button below, yeah? :)**


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